SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- Venus' flower basket, a white tubular
sponge that resides one mile down in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, is
prized among some Asian cultures for its skeleton's delicate
lattice-work.

In Japan, it was once given as a wedding gift, according to the
Encyclopedia Britannica.

But scientists at the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies,
an Army-funded consortium of university researchers, believe the sponge
could be prized for much more than its beauty.

That hard skeleton is fiberglass. And finding out how nature
manufactures glass without furnaces may unlock new cost-efficient ways
to make such materials.

"Sponge-inspired [technologies] can have varied applications
because it's a completely new way of synthesizing materials,"
said David H. Gay, director of technology at the institute.

The way biological organisms such as the sponge make glass differs
greatly from modern manufacturing plants, which require great amounts of
energy.

Researchers at the institute are solving the mystery of how the
deep sea dwelling organism makes glass and constructs complex patterns.
They hope their findings may one day revolutionize material
manufacturing.

The institute is leaning on a network of researchers from the
University of California-Santa Barbara, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and California Institute of Technology (Caltech). It is a
"virtual" institute, not a brick-and-mortar laboratory, but
the director Daniel Morse has an office at UCSB's Marine
Biotechnology Laboratory, which is a few yards away from the Pacific
shore. Downstairs, the lab maintains dozens of aquariums containing
marine life.

When they needed a Venus' flower basket sample, he didn't
need to wander far.

The sponge "illustrates the theme of the institute....
biological inspiration leading to technological innovation," Morse
said.

"The idea that biology--through millions of years of
evolution--has developed solutions for the synthesis of complex
materials, energy harnessing and transduction, sensing and for
information processing," he added.

The lab's core funding comes from the office of the assistant
secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, which
pays the institute about $6.5 million per year to conduct basic
research. It is part of a network of similar university-based
laboratories such as the computer simulations-focused Institute for
Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, the
Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology at MIT and the Institute for
Advanced Technology at the University of Texas-Austin.

ICB's roster of about 60 researchers concentrates on solving
longstanding problems that the natural world may have already worked
out.

Gay said it is a relatively inexpensive way for the military to tap
into the research talent that universities can offer. The Institute for
Collaborative Biology, for example, boasts of having two John D. and
Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation "genius" award recipients
and one Nobel Prize winner.

This comes at a time when military laboratories are having a
difficult time attracting the "best and the brightest"
scientists, according to preliminary findings of a Jason Group report,
which is examining how the military carries out basic research.

"Civilian career paths in the DoD research labs and program
management are not competitive to other opportunities in attracting
outstanding young scientists and retaining the best people,"
according to a briefing released at the National Defense Industrial
Association Disruptive Technologies conference.

Since the institute is not a brick-and-mortar lab, it has little
overhead and can spend more on this basic research, Morse said.

"These biological solutions--if we can dissect them and reveal
the underlying mechanisms--offer new pathways for development of
technology solutions to problems that are of importance to the Army as
well as society at large," Morse said.

The Venus' flower basket may offer up more cost efficient ways
to reproduce glass and fiberglass.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

One attribute Morse noted while holding up the skeleton is how
strong it is.

The creature makes minimal use of material in this lattice
architecture for maximal stress dissipation, he said.

"This is an energy dispersive structure," he noted.
"Like the inner core of an airplane wing."

The work builds upon research into the abalone shell, which is made
up of chalk, minerals and proteins. Separately they are not hard
materials, but when put together, they are 3,000 times stronger than
their components.

The team investigating the sponge found that each cell uses simple
building blocks that are cemented together. All this information to
build the larger structure is genetically encoded in its DNA.

The proteins, responsible for the synthesis of this glass,
self-assemble by recognition of genetically encoded complimentary
patches on the surfaces of the proteins. They interact and lock together
in a fractal pattern. This pattern, like branches of a tree, seems
random, but is not. The result is a perfectly structured cylinder of
protein that serves as a catalyst and template for the glass fibers.

"One of the challenges in bio- and nanotechnology today is how
does genetic coding lead to higher linear sequences, and how the final
results of these activities lead to hierarchical assemblies of complex
three-dimensional structures like this," Morse said.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The application could lead to less expensive ways for industry to
manufacture semi-conductors.

"If we learn how biology solves the problem, then we can
approach it from a completely different angle," Morse said.

Organisms such as bamboo also make silicon, a substance that is
used in everything from hand cream to tires to computer chips. And yet
it is a labor intensive, energy consuming process that involves crushing
and smelting quartz and caustic chemicals to remove the material.

The animal kingdom has inspired other technological solutions that
the military could use, although Morse stressed that the labs do not do
any research in weapons or munitions. Although it counts the Defense
Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research amongst its
other clients, it does not participate in any top secret programs. All
of its findings are published in open sources, he noted.

Such is the case of research into the common housefly.

Anyone who has tried to swat one knows they are elusive targets,
but why?

The pest happens to have the most rapidly adaptive flight control
system yet known.

"Within 100th of a second, the fly can respond to a gust of
wind and change direction with remarkable agility," Morse said.

An investigative team at Caltech, Michael Dickinson and Richard
Murray, looked at the information processing pathways from the
insect's eyes and wind sensors, which are basically the bristles on
the body.

They found that these wind sensors circumvented the fly's
brain and send messages directly to the flight control muscles. They
took the model of a fly's neuronal pathways, reduced it to an
engineering control diagram, and used that to pattern the circuitry on a
chip.

This chip may help micro-unmanned aerial vehicles improve their
performance when flying outdoors.

One of the advantages of micro-UAVs is their size, Gay pointed out.
But that's also a disadvantage outside. They work great in a lab,
but "wind gusts can overwhelm them."

Geckos found scurrying across walls in the tropics also offer some
interesting possibilities.

Biologists have always found it remarkable that the lizards can
hold up their weight on a wall, and run at the same time. Their feet
have an unusual adhesive that can stick to any surface, and it's a
reversible adhesive.

One of the world's foremost experts on surface forces, UCSB
chemical engineering professor Jacob Israelachvili, is on the
institute's staff.

The gecko inspired him to produce a micro-electrical mechanical
device that can grip and let go using atomic interactions.

This application can be used for small robots to crawl up walls.
But in the civilian world, a manufacturer in a clean room, for example,
can use such a gripper to pick up and let go of delicate parts without
the use of human hands.

Gay said the institute is uniquely interdisciplinary and relies on
a mix of bio-technologists, molecular biologists, chemists, physicists
and engineers working on these problems.

"That's why we're able to in some cases, use some
advanced biological approaches to dissect the problem, then use
chemists, physicists and engineers to solve the problem."

Taking these biologically inspired solutions from nature, a
university lab and then transferring them into the real-world where they
can make in impact is another challenge. The so-called "Valley of
Death," where good ideas die for lack of funding or knowledge of
how to make them into practical, marketable products, is a long-standing
problem when it comes to basic research.

The institute, during its five years of existence, can't brag
of any real-world "homeruns" yet, but Morse notes that its
work has resulted in about a dozen spin-off companies.

About half of them are working with Army laboratories. Others are
working with private sector companies to transfer the technology.

It will be up to them to take the technology to the next level.

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